Would I ever achieve my dreams? That was the question Tife asked himself when he failed his third jamb again. Tife was born with a silver spoon, and he was the only child of his parents. While growing up, he never lacked monetary things; everything he needed was always provided for him, barely before he asked. Tife was an intelligent, smart child, and he liked clarity so much, which made him ask questions someone would have thought bigger than his brain capacity, but trust Tife to remember every detail of answers provided to each question. Throughout his primary and secondary education programs, he never had reasons to have a B, all his results were always distinctions. Due to his brilliance and intelligence, he became teachers’ favorite and parents’ pride. Tife’s dreams was to become a civil engineer when he grew up, and he likes solving problems. It was a few months to Tife’s UTME exam when things started going south for his family. His father got duped of a huge amount of money while trying to do business transactions. Their lives started taking turns, in a bad way of course. A family who never lacked before became people who found it difficult to eat 3 square meals in a day. The drastic reduction of his father’s wealth was totally strange to him. He found it difficult to wrap his head around the fact that they were no more affluent people. The thought of his family now struggling affected him a lot, that he performed woefully in his first exam. That was the first failure he recorded ever since he was born. After his father got duped, he borrowed money from different people to run his business again, but he kept running into debt. No sooner than later, he got depressed and died due to depression. It was a month to Tife’s second UTME when his father’s death happened. He didn’t recover from the shock of his father’s death even after he wrote his exam; when the results were released, he performed poorly than he did the first time. His father’s death led his mother to start doing menial jobs. He couldn’t help but look for how he could assist his mother and himself financially. He started doing menial jobs and registered for his third UTME exam with money he got from the savings made while working, but he had little or no time to prepare for his exam because he always returned home tired most days. The exam time came, and he wrote it and did a bit better in it than the previous ones, but the score was too low for the Civil Engineering he wanted. When he saw his result this time, he started wailing. He called himself names and asked his mother if he would ever make it in life, but his mother assured him that through faith and hard work, he would become what he envisaged himself to be. He gave everything it took for his 4th UTME exam, he didn’t let any bad thought put him down, he prayed like never before because he had dreams to achieve, he wrote his exams with faith, and he did excellently well. He was admitted into the university to study the course of his choice. During his undergraduate years, he did a side hustle to relieve his mother of her burden. He did not let these hustles affect him, and he studied harder, for he promised himself he wouldn’t let anything bring him down. READ ALSO: Fortune Favours The Curious: Embracing The Power of Inquisitiveness He later graduated as the best graduating student in his faculty and department at the same time. While giving his speech during convocation, while giving his speech as the Best Graduating Student, his first statement was, “Indeed, dreams come true “.
